Crafting For Those Dedicated to Experimentation

Buying

I officially have my Spinolution electric Firefly spinning wheel ordered. Since they are an American based company and they make each wheel to order it will be between 4-6 weeks before mine is shipped. This is actually a good thing, it will give me time to enjoy the anticipation and look forward to seeing if there are any huge sales that are going to occur for the other crafting materials I hope to obtain.

I know that this seems like a sudden spree, and fairly irresponsible. Truthfully I have ensured that I am spending less than half of what I have come into, saving what I can when I can, and that I have enough left over to cover the major expenses that are going to come up in the next year. These three purchases are not going to significantly impact my financial situation, however they will significantly improve my productivity.

For the rest of 2018 I will be working and learning to enjoy what I have and what I can do. For most of 2019 I will be figuring out what I want to do with the rest of my life, what my priorities are, and how I am going to achieve them. At present I am overwhelmed by possibilities, and need to have time to settle down and figure out where I want my energies to go. I know that spinning and weaving are two things that I want to have as a priority in my life.

Paradise Fibers November 2018 box was themed around Harry Potter, to the extent that they are running a house cup. Once specific goals have been accomplished then points are assigned and the house with the highest number of points will win. The prize is 500 paradise points for each member of the house, which in reality is five dollars off of an order, nothing to sneeze at.

On another note, my first Green Chef box was scheduled to be delivered this past Saturday, I thought Wednesday but checked again and it was supposed to be Saturday. This did not happen, due to the weather, and I am anxious to see how the ingredients have held up over the weekend. I will report more about this in my next post.

So, major life decisions are on hold, but pending. Expenditures are not beyond what is feasible at this time (though some house repairs might have to be accomplished using loans). This is going to be a year of self exploration and renewal. It will also be a year of renewal for my home and sweeping out what I do not (realistically) need.

I adore how many beautiful sets of fiber arrived in this box. There are a coup,e mini skeins of yarn that should be fun to lay with. I also received about 4 stitch markers as a lovely pin. The box arrived less than a week after it was ordered. I cannot wait to start spinning these and hope to show off when they are done.

I managed to add at least 13 new breeds to my fiber study. There was one booth that had over 60 breeds, but mostly unwashed wool. Since my mother has COPD (and is recovering from double Pneumonia) I am unwilling to bring unwashed fleece into the house. While I am certain that the sheperds do their best, Wool Washer’s Disease is also known as Anthrax, so I am not going to take chances.

Below please find some of my amazing finds, I cannot wait to get started spinning them!

Above are my two braids of Rambouillet from two different vendors. As you can see one is white and combed top while the other is a natural brown and I believe carded. The preparations and probably micron count are so very different but both are extremely springy. I cannot wait to get my hands on them to test and spin!

Above is my Tunis top, I have half of this section already spun into a single, I hope to ply and create samples over this weekend. It was an amazing spin, if a bit coarse. The dyed blues and pinks have mixed together in places to create an amazing purple effect that I am fascinated to see plied.

The extremely rare hog island I obtained is extremely full of vegetable matter. The texture is very springy and I am looking forward to working with this fiber, but I also believe I might try to use the Hackle to get out a lot of the vegetable matter before attempting to spin this fiber.

I must have jiggled the camera an extreme amount while trying to photograph this Black Welsh, but the fiber is divine anyway. A little coarse, but with that deep black color who cares?

I managed to obtain lincoln roving as pictured here, and lincoln lamb locks as pictured below. I will admit I made a mistake, the lincoln lamb locks are not the beautiful long locks I envisioned, they are quite short and I will probably use them to add texture to a batt instead of flicking them open for a true worsted yarn as I first envisioned. The roving is luscious, though a bit coarser than I was expecting.

This half pound of Karukal is just begging me to sink my fingers into it’s pretty softness and spin like the wind. Soon, I promise soon!

This beautiful black braid of Zwartables is going to be a blast to spin, again it is on the coarser side of things, but who knows what it will do once it is spun and washed. The guessing is half of the fun!

I went a little overboard with the Wensleydale, but I cannot for the life of me regret it. I have this amazing half pound that I can use to spin worsted and see how well the finished yarn takes to dye as well as a braid of yellow Wensleydale near the bottom of the post that I can spin up and see the different shades of yellow pop out!

This braid of Textel seems to be on the downy side of wool, it should be a fun, soft spin, and the resulting yarn will be amazing (in its own way just like the rest of the yarns).

At the Coopworth booth they didn’t have any prepared roving but they did have an amazing selection of curls. I love how they look in their bags and did manage to comb out a tiny portion on my new hackle. They comb out beautifully, I think that as I have time I will pick apart the locks that I can find for combing and then use the drum carder for the rest. This will give me a great chance to explore differences in preparation and how they effect the finished product. So much fun and so much to learn!

One of my patrons assured me that I already had some Finn that they spun as a part of their breed sample. Oh well, I didn’t have it written down as a breed that I own, but even so this is such a fluffy bunch (and I was able to practice on an electric wheel for the first time with some skirted finn at the Folk Art Booth, so there is a special memory in this wool already).

This mohair along with the pink locks below were obtained at a booth with two amazing ladies that offered to let me go see their goats anytime I wanted. Even though I don’t live in Maryland I am tempted anyway! At least I have this amazing roving and curls to play with!

No one ever told me that Cormo is one of the softest breeds ever. I don’t know how this is going to spin up, but for now it is like petting my faux angora, so soft and beautiful!

The Cotswold below is such a delight to pet. I cannot wait to spin it up. The Ross Farm was one of two booths at which I found Four different Breeds that I had not spun yet. It was so much fun finding these different companies that raised or processed different heritage breeds.

This fiber is like trying to spin very coarse hair. I have not gotten a chance to even pull it out of the bag other than the tail sticking out the top but I can already tell that spinning this is going to be interesting. I cannot wait!

The last, but certainly not least, bit of fiber I purchased was some Superwash Targhee from a vendor that is friends with my father’s cousin who took me to Maryland Sheep and Wool on Saturday. The colors are interesting but more than that I love spinning Targhee for it’s springy texture. I am not thrilled that it is superwash, I have heard that some people have skin troubles with the chemicals used to make it superwash, but I look forward to working with it anyway.

So, there you have it, my stash haul from Maryland Sheep and Wool. I cannot for the life of me believe that it was two weeks ago already. Oh well, more time to save up for next year!

I am on the final stretch of getting ready for my trip. My sibling, who is going to come up and keep an eye on Mom while I’m gone, let me know that I can have a carryon and a purse so I don’t have to worry too much about that. I am getting really weird about this.

I have made sure that I have enough room in my favorite Timbuk2 bag to hold my yarn that I am trading Buffalo Wool Co. for a discount on a skein of their yarn, as well as all of the bags I am hoping to take since many of the vendors do not provide bags, and the first aid kit I picked up for this trip. I have a bunch of little wallets to squirrel away my money so that I do not spend it all at once and so that I can keep track of how I am doing with the spending. My personal grooming equipment is in a plastic box that I plan on putting in my suitcase. There are two pairs of sneakers that I picked up with good arch support so that my plantar fasciitis doesn’t flare up during the trip. It is quite painful when the muscle in the arch of your foot is pulled so tight you cannot sleep.

I plan on packing my pill container as well as a list of the medications I take so that the TSA doesn’t have any reason to be concerned. I know, I’m a bit obsessed. I messaged with my second cousins to see if they have any advice, and now I can only hope that things are going to go well. I’ve got a great class to teach tomorrow and then I’ve got three more days of work to get through before I will be winging my way off to Maryland.

Saturday I bought YARN! I live in rural western New York and as such the closest we have to a LYS is Joann Fabrics. This past Saturday I had an opportunity to go to Erie, PA. There were a couple of yarn stores that I wanted to hit, and boy was I happy I did. Yoy cannot see it well from the photo but the first yarn, going left to right, is super sparkly, the second will be great to ply with, and the third contains Hemp. I hope to knit up the hemp so that my students get an idea of what a yarn containing hemp will be like. I bought all three of those from the Cultured Purl. This is also a great chance to play around with adding yarn to my stash in Ravelry, it was fun and easy!

The other LYS I stopped at is Rustic and Refined. I was really lucky there, she was having a sale on Louisa Harding Angora mix yarn. I was able to get two balls of two different colorways. I hope to make scarves from them, they are so soft and pretty. The last purchase I made there is the pretty yellow Linen Cotton blend yarn. Again I hope to knit these up so that my students have an idea of what a sample of a linen blend yarn would look like.

I also wound up going to a local comic book store, much to my surprise I wound up finding four different older weaving books to add to my growing library. I did spend some time in Barnes and Noble, I managed to find a soft leather bound notebook that I hope will be good for keeping track of my fiber desires. I love that even though it is leather I can fold it up to stuff into my bag.

I am so very pleased with all of my purchases, I cannot wait to knit and block these samplers. I have a Hokett 8 dent mini tapestry loom I am going to warp with 10/2 cotton to see if the angora makes a good weft at 8epi or if I have to try 12 or 16 epi.

I might have some very exciting news in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

Ply Magazine, to celebrate their first book, is going to be hosting a Year-Long Spin-Along. 51 Weeks of chances to win a year-long subscription to their magazine. Being honest with myself, I cannot express how very happy I am that I pre-ordered this book before I even knew about the contest. Now I get to participate, you can without purchase, follow along, and I saved $4 off of the cover price, lol. This brings my thrifty heart a great deal of joy. More importantly than all of that, this will bring 51 weeks of challenges to one extent or another. The first few are easy enough, but I hope I will be able to get to the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival this year so I can pick up some supplies for a few of the challenges. Spinning a dual coated sheep will be interesting, but I have to find a source for the outer coat, a source for the inner coat, and a source where I can buy both coats mixed together. Likewise with the lock spinning, I can find them, but my thrifty soul has issues with spending $10+ on an ounce of locks (very pretty locks don’t get me wrong) then another $5+ for shipping and handling. If I can get a good price on some pretty locks at the festival then go me. If I cannot get there this year, that is up in the air and I’ll blog when I know, then I’ll have to suck it up and find some good sales.

I have ordered a Brother Drum Carder for myself for Christmas. (mom is getting a set of stacking boxes with clear doors for her yarn stash, shhhh don’t tell her). The Drum carder I have ordered will have 90 tpi, suitable for carding finer wools without damaging them yet coarse enough that I can card almost anything else I desire. In an effort to get into the carding spirit I also ordered a pound of undyed wool. I have played with Kool-Aid Dye in the past, causing the co-president of my guild to think I only like primary pinks and blues, but I have been hearing a lot about dying wool with Wilton and Rit Dyes. Due to this desire to experiment, I am doing some research about other peoples experiments with this dye.

The first mentioned Rit dye and a few ‘glugs’ of vinegar. Her experiment went well!

Love Knitting has an article about Wilton Food Dyes; Start by soaking the fiber in a vinegar bath, 1/4 cup to about 4 oz of fiber, for at least 20 minutes. Pour the fiber, vinegar, another 1/4 cup of vinegar into a pot. Add the color a tiny bit at a time and agitate to disperse the dye. Start on low and heat up your pot of fiber, when it is at a simmer just before boiling take it off of the stove and let it cool down. Rinse with lukewarm water until the water runs clear, then hang up to dry. There are also some tips about painting yarn, I particularly find it interesting that sponges (along with a vinegar dye mix) can be used to paint the yarn/fiber to create gradients and variations. Heat is still needed to set the fiber, so the author steamed the yarn for about 40 minutes in a steamer basket. Though they mentioned that it is possible to microwave for 1-2 minute bursts for about 5 minutes to set the yarn.

Both the RIT Dye site and Wilton Food Site have information on how to use their dyes for coloring different materials. I cannot wait to begin experimentation!